agitators, as radicals, as communists, upsetting a stable racial relationship in the house as portrayed by southern whites, even southern white moderates. and i became increasingly fascinated by the parallels between the time and place in which i was living in the early 1960s in a border state city like baltimore epngulfed by thee events in the deeper south. the parallels between that and what had happened exactly 100 years earlier, in the early 1860s. confrontation between the federal government and southern political leaders who were vowing massive resistance to national laws, violence in the conflict. of course, violence on the far greater scale in the 1860s than the 1960s, but violence nevertheless.

martin luther king trying to get president kennedy to issue a new emancipation proclamation on the 100th anniversary of the first one. the march on washington in 1963. all of these things were crowding together in the early 1960s. and that's when i made a decision which was not at first a very popular decision with professor woodward to shift my focus from looking at the first reconstruction in a city like alabama to looking at the role of the abolitionists after the beginning of the civil war and after the abolition of slavery, which was a preoccupation of my scholarship for the next 15 years with a dissertation and a book that grew out of it, "the struggle for equality," and the second book, "the negro civil war" which was really a spinoff

of "the struggle for equality" and then "the abolitionist legacy" carrying that story of the second and third generation of abolitionists down to the founding of the naacp, which at the time was called the new abolitionist movement in 1909 and 1910. that brought me to the middle of the 1970s. and i couple of things occurred then, i think, to change the trajectory of my career in a major way. one has been mentioned, but hasn't really been explicated in any way, and that is the vietnam war in the late 1960s and early 1970s. that made me more and more aware of the connection between protest movements, the military, and the political context in

which both the war and the anti-war movement protests against it took place. in other words, the connection to politics and to the military became increasingly a focus of my thinking. and i think the climate of the times. and in 19 76, a textbook publisher approached me and asked me about writing a new textbook to take the place of the old james t. randolph by then randall donald civil war and reconstruction, and perhaps somewhat naively and foolishly i agreed to undertake that project. and that evolved five years later into a college textbook "ordeal by fire." at the same time, woodward approached me about writing a volume in the oxford history of the united states, which turned

out after first going to be the gilded age reconstruction gilded age volume to be the antebellum and civil war volume. and somewhat naively having signed one contract in 1976, i signed a second contract also in 1976 which of course enslaved me, i suppose, one might say for for the next decade to research and write both those books. that experience growing out of also the kind of increasing awareness of the interconnection of social protest, social movements, politics, and war was amplified by my experience in writing those two books starting in 1976 and culminating in the publication in 1988 of "battle cry of freedom."

i came to my point of view on the subjects that i was originally interested in, the abolitionists and black radical protest movements in the 1860s and after, evolved into i think something more complex. i came to appreciate and understand abraham lincoln much more than i originally had like all young scholars, as a graduate student and a beginning historian, i tended to absorb the point of view of the people i was writing about, looking at their speeches and writings and letters. and the abolitionists were quite critical of abraham lincoln. first for his slowness to move against slavery and once he had actually begun to move against

slavery his gradualism and conservatism on the question of racial equal rights. so my early work i think reflected that critical perspective on lincoln, but i came to appreciate much more once i got into looking at all sides of these questions. the political and the military. the kinds of pressures on lincoln from all sides, right, left, middle, north, south, border state, and the skill with which he navigated through these political minefields and military minefields during his presidency and his experience as commander in chief. i also came to see the interconnection between what i had originally been interested in slavery and its abolition, and the political context in which that process took place,

and eventually the military context in which both these social protest movements and the political experience of the 1860s took place. and i was particularly struck by something that lincoln said in his second inaugural address when he pointed out as he put it upon the progress of our arms, all else chiefly depends. that sums up the reason why as joe has mentioned i have become after not starting out that way and with no formal training in the period, in the subject, something of a military historian as well as an historian of movement, the anti-slavery movement, abraham lincoln and

the civil war and the reconstruction period of tim. i came to see that as mao tse-tung once said, all power grows out of the barrel of a gun. and that was quite true in the civil war and reconstruction period. and as a consequence, i have come to see that if we are to understand the process by which slavery was abolished in transition to freedom fitfully began during the war and especially reconstruction period and the way in which america was radically changed by the experience of the civil war, i needed to understand the military context in which that had taken place. and so from having been an historian of the abolitionist and anti-slavery movement and then an historian of the politics of the civil war and reconstruction, i added yet another layer of being an

historian of the military course of the civil war. and every time i do one of the battlefield tours that you've heard about this morning, and i have done many of them over the years, i try to make that interconnection clear to the people who are going on these tours. we are not just talking about the tactics and the command decisions made on these battlefields but rather on the interconnection between what took place at gettysburg or antietam or gettysburg or wherever we might be and the political context of the time and its consequences for the world in which we live today. well, with that, i think i will sit down, and we will entertain questions from the audience. [ applause ] if someone has a comment or question, if you'd please go to the microphone, you can address it to anyone on the panel or

just speak. and please identify yourself. >> my name is darrell stover. i'm out of north carolina with the north carolina humanities council. very live mic. my question is to the whole panel, but maybe even more specifically to our honoree. there may have been some directions pointed in the comments given by the panelists, but for me and especially in these times, my question is what are the important questions that we may now start to examine or may point the way for other historians to come relative to looking at the war and its aftermath relative to african-americans and this whole notion of the long reconstruction?

>> well, let me just briefly comment on that. i think that going back at least to the 1930s with wb duboise's long neglected but i think now appreciated book "likely construction," the impact of the war on ordinary people, not just african-americans, but others in america, has been an important subject of research in the last 15 or 20 years with respect to african-americans even longer, i think. that's i think a kind of development that will continue and should continue because this was an experience that perhaps more than any other single experience of americans going back for more than two or 300 years profoundly reshaped the world in which ordinary americans, especially in the south and especially african-americans, lived.

and i think that is the direction that scholarship has been going in for the last 10 or more years. more than that. and will continue to go and should continue to go. >> anyone else want to add anything? kathryn? >> several times people ask about the new work and the field of civil war history. and i think it's been the most exciting time. certainly when i went to princeton, i never imagined that i would end up a civil war historian. that was indeed in the vietnam era. that was indeed in a time of great strife over the position of the invisible in history. but i think it's been exciting that in the past quarter century especially, and when we look at the anniversary of the american civil war and see the way in which civil war history has been

redefined, certainly the scholarship in the field of women's history has gone a far piece from mary massey's bonnet brigade, which was commissioned during the centennial, and i think certainly a fine call for us to walk the battlefields. and there are many battlefields that we need to continue to struggle with, and one of them is to be inclusive of all of those. and there's still, i promise you, great topics on this. i went to northern ireland the year the queen withdrew the troops. so it's a kind of reconstruction in northern ireland. and one of the things i was struck by was the way in which the students i teach american history to have a different question about reconstruction and battles. and they come up with wonderful topics and are pursuing things like the role of the french in the american civil war. those french born, french speaking troops who fought. so i think we are in a time of great diversity, great expansion. it's wonderful and exciting.

and i think that jim mcpherson has been so receptive and inclusive to this that my second book was the other civil war, which came out of a lecture he allowed me to give in his undergraduate course. so he perhaps alarmed his adviser by going in a different direction, and when i went down south to do my work, i rode the bus so i didn't have to worry about those license plates. so thank you for your question. >> i think it's important to remember that jim reminded us of contingency. we read a letter last night that a student asked jim, how many more soldiers from the confederacy would it take to have won for the confederacy? and he replied to the student, none. that in fact we now have contingency in the civil war. but i don't think historians have given contingency to

reconstruction. and i think we have to look back at reconstruction with the same ideas that we did with the civil war when i came along, when it was sort of assumed that there was no way that the confederacy could win. and i would also like to remind people that we too easily forget because we saw the outcome and how the union wins that with the civil war, the direction of history was going very differently. after the american revolution, we have these revolutionary movements toward popular government, and you have the french revolution, but then you have the failures of 1848, the revolutions there. you have the republics that are failing in latin america and mexico. and you have maxmillion put on the throne, in fact, in mexico. and even though giribaldi reunites italy and becomes a

monarchy. so the confederacy is actually in the direction of history, and this is part of lincoln's sort of last best hope that it's also about popular government, that people can govern themselves. and it's a real change. and out of the war also comes something that jim has written about, the change of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendment toward a positive liberty. before that, the government was always guaranteeing the rights of the states, and now you have the rights of individuals promised not to be enslaved, to be treated equally and have the right to vote. and this changes our definition of liberty and freedom throughout the world that we once again becomes the inspiration for better and nobler things. so those are some things i think we need to think about as we think about the civil war and reconstruction for some great work that scholars are now engaged in, particularly younger students. please. oh, yeah. wait. >> rob wolf. >> i'll get you.

>> my question is for professor mcpherson, and it deals with the issue of contingency that they have talked about. if i remember correctly in your book "battle cry of freedom," you maintained pretty much the traditional view at least my view and the view of most people i know that gettysburg and vicksburg combined were the turning point. i know since then, you have had a book that you put out on antietam. and my question is, is it still your position that pretty much the turning point took place at gettysburg and vicksburg or have your views evolved since then? >> i identified what i called four major turning points in the civil war, and i think i would stick with that. the first one was actually a turning point from what looked like inevitable union victory in the spring of 1862, with all of the union successes in the

western theater and along the south atlantic coast, and with mclellan's army at the potomac more than 100,000 strong looking like any day here at the beginning of june they were going to march into richmond. could the confederacy have survived this succession of defeats, climaxed by the capture of their capital? but of course what we know that counteroffensives by the army of northern virginia and other confederate armies turned that situation around. so that by the late summer of 1862, rather than being in danger of losing their capital, confederate armies had crossed the potomac river and were threatening to cross the ohio river. then the battle of antietam and of somewhat less importance but significant nevertheless the battle of perriville stopped

that seemingly inevitable confederate momentum. so i would argue that that was the second turning point, this time in favor or at least stopping confederate momentum. but that momentum revived in the spring of 1863, and was stopped again by gettysburg and vicksburg. and then later in the fall chattanooga. so that was the third turning point. but as i and others have written, it looked like the north was prepared to throw in the towel in the summer of 1864 because of huge casualties without any apparent kind of progress in both virginia and georgia. in august of 1864, lincoln was sure that he would lose re-election. the re-election on the grounds of military failure. yet with the fall of atlanta and the union victories in the shenandoah valley in the fall of 1864 and then the re-election of

lincoln, i see that as the final and decisive turning point. but i argued that each one of i argue that each one of these could have gone in a different direction and that it was only particular factors in each case that were not ordained in any particular way. the fall of atlanta in 1864 no more inevitable than the fall of richmond had been in 1862. that's what i meant by contingency. we need to understand in each of these cases . >> it synthesizes the various social political economic

military factors that go into the outcome of the civil war. if you think of politics as the war of other things, which is the many things jim taught me. i'd like to see more effort on the part of political historians to acknowledge the social history revolution and more willingness so we understand better why republicans assumed that they would run into lines, why they assumed that and why that was always part of the policy. and we need to understand why the slaves understood that the place to run was not the confederate lines but the union lines, that it made a difference which lines you went to.

there tending to be too much separation between these explanations for the origins of things during the civil war and i think jim pointed a different way in battle cry of freedom and i'm still challenged by that. >> did someone else have a comment on the panel? do we have anyone else? jerry. >> i teach at lawrence university and am proud to say that i was a graduate student of jim mcpherson. jim, my question for you is if a college steenior came to you toy

and said i want to be an american historian, what would be your advice for >> my advice would be to go to one of the universities where my distinguished colleagues teach and study whatever interests they want to pursue. in recent years, i think one of the more exciting developments has been a new scholarship in the history of the american revolution in the early republic. many scholars have been doing for the american rough ligs and early history-of will -- early republic what i and others have tried to do.

but that's only one area. i always tell college seniors at princeton when they were trying to find a subject for the senior thesis or graduate students looking for a topic for dissertation, it has to a topic that you have a real interest in. i talked about the way i was originally going to give a dissertation on alabama construction but grew cool for a variety of reasons about that. and moved into another subject. which was one that had come to interest me far more. and looking back on that, i'm sure that if i had pursued alabama reconstruction, my whole career might have been different. so the first requirement is it has to be something that really turns you on, that lights a fire

under you. because you'll spend years on the research and writing and rewriting of the dissertation. it has to be something that you're really facinated with. and in a larger sense, i think that's true giving advice to a college of my colleagues will s don't go into the profession of history because there are no jobs in the field. you yourself became a lawyer rather than pursuing your first love of history. and after 11 years as a lawyer, you decided finally to pursue your first love of history. and it's brought you to where you wanted to be in life. so i give that advice to seniors. in contrast to some of my colleagues, even though the job market looked bad now and maybe it will look bad five, six years from now when you're trying to get a job, if you don't try to

make a career out of what you really like, you're going to be unhappy. >> i would add having looked at jim and pat mcpherson's life and things, with all the problems we have today in the history plofgs, i would maintain a good example here is the last best profession in america. so thank you all, thank you you all for coming here. thank you, jim, thank you the whole panel. [ applause ]

throughout the weekend here on american history tv on c-span3, watch personal interviews about historic events on oral histories. our history book shelf features some of the best known history writers. revisit key figures, battles and events during the 150th anniversary of the civil war. visit college classrooms across the country during lectures in history. go behind the scenes at museums and historic sites on american artifacts. and the presidency looks at the policies and legacies of past american presidents. view our complete schedule at cspan.org slash history and sign up to have it e-mailed to you by pressing the c-span alert button. a generation before president john f. kennedy acting on behalf of a grateful nation desk thated him an honorary american citizen, winston churchill paid his own tribute to his transatlantic origins.

appearing before a joint session of congress on the day after christmas 1941, he observed i cannot help reflect it that if my father had been american and my mother british, instead of the other way around, i might have got here on my own. today outside the british embassy on massachusetts avenue, churchill literally described two nations. with one bronze foot planted on british soil and the other on american. this pleased the old man himself no end. of the statue announced on his 89th birthday, he said i feel it will rest happily and securely on both feet. controversy arose over the sculpt informati sculpt sculptor's depiction. now because of his defiance stance. no, it was another churchill

icon, the significance gcigar id that offended some members of the organization responsible for the sculpture. in the end, authenticity and the cigar won out. unveiled a year after churchill's death, the figure seems even larger than its 9-foot dimensions would indicate. almost half a century organization winston churchill still manages to dominate his surroundings. >> by the way, i cannot help reflecting that in my father had been american and my mother british instead of the other way around, i might have got here on my own. [ laughter ] history tv sits in on a lecture with one of the country's college professors. you can watch the classes here every saturday at 8:00 p.m. and midnight eastern, and sundays at 1:00 p.m.